November 2012
Intermediate to advanced
794 pages
22h 9m
English
E.4 STIRLING’S FORMULA
The expression for factorial is, of course, given by
(E.21)
For large n, it can be approximated by Stirling's formula:
(E.22)
For convenience when computing probabilities for combinatoric problems (involving discrete random variables), we include some factorials in Table E.1. The approximations provided by Stirling's formula (rounded to one decimal place) are also shown, which we see are quite accurate even for relatively small values of n.
TABLE E.1 Factorials and Stirling's Approximation

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